


Catching On

by jayjaybee



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 08:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7884370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjaybee/pseuds/jayjaybee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanssen – well, Hanssen has probably always known, but as for the rest -</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching On

For Fletch, the penny starts to drop early one morning as he’s loitering in the car park, hoping to catch Serena on her way into the department. As her car pulls in he’s already running through his speech about shift patterns and half-term holidays in his head, but then he stops short, because he sees that Serena’s not alone, and he sees who she is with, and he sees what they do before they get out of the car. 

Fletch shakes his head. Should’ve seen that coming, really. 

By the time that they are out of the car, both Serena and Bernie have got their professional game faces on, so much so that if he hadn’t seen what he’s just seen, he’d still believe that the pair of them are just colleagues, friendly colleagues, rather than whatever it is that they now are to each other. 

But perhaps he wouldn’t believe that, he reflects, as he catches Serena for a chat and he watches her watch Bernie go on her way into the building ahead of them. The look on her face as she gazes after her – well, smitten doesn’t even start to cover it. 

*

Raf doesn’t believe him, when he mentions it later. Sensing an opportunity, Fletch encourages him in a wager. 

*

It’s not the way that Serena’s hand rests on Bernie’s shoulder as she stands behind her at the nurses’ station computer that makes Lou suspect that Fletch is onto something. Rather, it’s the way, as they bicker over a patient's results and diagnosis and the most suitable treatment plan, that Serena’s hand absentmindedly turns over, and her fingers reach up to play with a strand of Bernie’s hair, that makes it clear that whatever’s going on there is not in any way platonic. 

Well, Lou thinks. Poof Raf. 

*

Morven ignores the rumours. What she can’t ignore, however, is what she sees in the store room one late afternoon. 

‘Oh,’ she says, backing out of the room. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ 

Later, when gossip spreads about what the heads of AAU have been getting up to in the store room, the source of the rumour is not Morven. She has sworn to herself never to reveal what she saw. 

(And indeed, she never does.)

*

Ric hasn’t heard the gossip, but he catches on to what's going on one evening in Albie’s when they’re all out for a drink. Thinking back later, he realizes that he should have guessed that something was going on when he returned from the bar and caught sight of Bernie’s hand on Serena’s knee, given that, as tactile as Serena was with everyone, Bernie was, usually, rather more self-contained. 

But it isn’t that that alerts him. Rather, it’s how Bernie says, ‘Time for home?’ and Serena replies ‘I’ll call a cab’, and then, when the cab arrives and the pair of them stand to leave, how Serena picks an imaginary spot of lint from Bernie’s shoulder, and Bernie holds the door for Serena, and Serena tucks her arm through Bernie’s, that gives it away. 

Perhaps he wonders about what once might have been. Perhaps he doesn’t. He has another drink.

*

Over the course of a week or so, the weight of the accumulated evidence comes to be such that Raf realizes that the bet he made was somewhat rash. He holds on, though, but his refusal to concede defeat becomes untenable one morning when the lift doors open in AAU to reveal Serena and Bernie untangling themselves from an embrace, with the result that Holby City’s least well-kept secret (of this week) can now, no longer, really be called a secret at all. 

Raf resigns himself to making the kids’ packed lunches for a fortnight. 

*

The Fletchlings are, secretly, very pleased. Uncle Raf makes far better butties than their dad does. 

But don’t tell their dad that.


End file.
